WordPress has a new feature in the form of “identicons“.

Identicons work essentially by generating an avatar (the “icon” in “identicon“) for users without one (such as a Gravatar avatar). The means of generation is essentially an algorithm that creates an icon that is unique each possible IP address meaning that someone with a static IP address will have an unchanging identicon that no other computer on the Internet should be able to share.

Identicons essentially give a means of recognising sock puppets. People who post under more than one name. They can also stop some people posing as others.

How reliable are identicons though?

Consider that I myself am an Internode customer. Consider that more than a couple of people who have ever commented on this blog have similar Internet plans to me and indeed, cycle through the same range of IP addresses that I do, each time that they connect.

Both of my brothers have accounts that cycle through the same range. So does at least one cousin (as well as a couple of our mutual friends) and one Uncle. So does the couple who’s wedding I was best man at last year.

I know of a couple of blogs on my blogroll who’s authors have accounts that cycle through the same range, and at least two commentors on this blog who aren’t bloggers themselves also have IP addresses in the same range!

It’s not at all impossible for for those of us who cycle through the same range (i.e. who have our IPs dynamically assigned from Internode rather than statically) to at some point occupy an IP address that another of us used during a session previously. This would result in the use of the same, identical identicon for two people (albeit not at the same time).

I’m also curious (and I should really look into it) as to how similar identicons with similar IP addresses are. Are they discernible from a casual glance? If any fellow Internode using bloggers want to give this post a link/pingback, it would help as when embedding pinkbacks in the comments threads, Gravatars aren’t used.

Actually, I’ve got things set to “Wavatar” at the moment, but I can switch and change and take a screenshot if people participate.

Anyway, but to my blogging semi-hiatus (which will now probably end before the end of the month).

~ Bruce

In response to Ben Stein and Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor claiming that Soviet Russia and NAZI Germany were the result of reason.

“You can do all kinds of reductios with Stein’s claim. Scientists were involved in the Holocaust, therefore science is evil. Trains were used to transport Jews to the death camps, therefore trains are evil. The railway tracks were made of metal, therefore metal is evil. And so on.

Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor, on the other hand, cuts directly to the chase: thinking was used in the planning of the Holocaust, therefore thinking is evil.”

(AV, 2008 )

Colour this blog evil.

~ Bruce

I couldn’t think of a sufficiently witty pun to follow on from the title of a recent post of The Editor’s.

An era has come to an end at GrodsCorp and I freely confess that I’m happy about it. I’m happier still that more than one other has decided to declare an end to it as well. There finally seems to be a broad consensus.

What’s coming to an end? Well, not this blog for starters! Nope. For some of us, it’s been two and a half years of having a particularly pernicious Queenslander perpetually out of the corner of our eyes (though no desire or solicitation on our part).

People will be ignoring him. People won’t be letting him comment at their blogs. People won’t be reading his rubbish, either his fallacy ridden ideas or his personal attack pieces. People won’t be writing about him nor will they be communicating with him, nor linking to him.

I expect that people will remove links to the few blogs that discuss said fellow. Basically, we are making him disappear from our view of the blogosphere. If you are a blogger and you know who I’m talking about, I encourage you to do the same.

Indeed, I think it would be good that in addition to bloggers joining in on this, that they declare their intent to do so either in the comments here or at Grods, or in a post of their own. Let people know that it’s become tiresome (both the stalking and the retaliatory hijinks) and be done with it.

At times it’s been funny but It’s also been distracting to intelligent discussion and at other times downright disturbing. Actually, with three stings catching out said disturbing element in the act of personal information mining, and one serendipitous exposure of the same, you do have to wonder what he’s been up to that he hasn’t been caught out on.

I’m not going to dwell on it though.

I’m not naming said person of course. Part of this era coming to an end is that I’ll no longer be writing any posts with said Queenslander’s name in it (and I’d thank you to do the same in the comments of this post) nor in future will I be using the alias “El Stalko” or any other for that matter.

At least not without something else happening first. The one condition that will precipitate another post on said stalker of bloggers is that someone successfully brings action against him.

This may not be any time soon. I currently have no such intentions to bring action myself and I am aware of nobody else having such intention either.

So why am I writing this? In part, it’s a bit of a celebration really. Earlier this year we got a bit of a break when people just ignored him. You could read blogs X,Y and Z and he wouldn’t be a factor. It was good.

Also, I need to point out a couple of matters of blog administration (don’t you love it).

People (and I’m looking at James in particular) have made efforts to keep me updated on whatever said Queenslander has been up to in terms of the more unsavory stuff. Far more than has made it onto the pages of this blog, and more than that combined with the stuff I’ve sent of to other bloggers (which for the most part has also been given the raincheck treatment).

Not that interested really guys. Unless it’s something that I or another could seriously bring charges against our stalker from Queensland for, I don’t want to know about it. I’ve got plenty of the little stuff in my inbox as it is.

Sure, I’ve written about some of his antics before because I write about Internet thuggery, but there are and will always be other Internet brownshirts (Lance, Mallot, Beck, Blair etc). Tell me about the others instead if you think I’d want to write about it.

So yeah. Don’t tell me about said stalker’s antics unless it’s truly important and also, if you do have something important to tell me about him, don’t go writing about it in the comments threads! Email me (and again, only if truly important)!

Part of the idea of this blanket ban is to stop disruptions after all!

In an effort to stop the “recent comments” side bar clear from disruptions, I’ll soon be sifting through posts where the stalker from Queensland is mentioned and disabling new comments. Following that, I’ll disable comments for this post as well.

Let’s let this era on he blogosphere come to an end.

~ Bruce

I’ve just been aware that I’ve made the (perhaps inevitable) error of presenting a hoax fundie site / organisation as a real one. The site/org in question is Objective Ministries.

I did do a little checking around to see if it was a hoax, but clearly not enough. The museum of hoaxes entry has been helpful in revealing the truth, although many of the tell-tale signs of the hoax mentioned are gone.

So before I go on with the caveat of why the stuff up isn’t as bad as all that, and why I did stuff up, let me first apologise for getting it wrong. Sorry.

My first contact with the site was a couple of years ago and was by way of an argument on a Newsgroup (or a discussion list - I was subscribed to a few at the time), where genuine, known apologists (i.e. known not to be hoaxers) had posted material from Objective Ministries as source material; i.e. the fundamentalist theists I was in debate with treated the hoax material as genuine.

This is my main reason for lowering my guard when checking if Objective Ministries was a hoax. A bad mistake considering I generally don’t trust everything I read on the net, especially from people with a track record of dissembling (which said theists had).

One does however, given the rather faithful nature of the hoax, have to consider how misleading my treatment of it was. If apologists can see it as genuine, then it can’t be entirely unrepresentative can it?

The “arguments” (or rather memes) posted on the site (”this is a Christian country” and dino-science) are repeated elsewhere in the culture wars (for example, in Australia’s History Wars and in the works of Kent Hovind the memes are respectively employed). It’s no wonder fundies would refer to it as a source.

In any case, my treatment of these elements of Objective Ministries wasn’t entirely serious anyway. Not quite satirical myself I have to confess, but certainly with comedic intent. Too bad I didn’t know it was someone else’s joke already though.

As for the embedded ads. So outlandish I should have known? Well, no actually. The embedded ads are actually real. They aren’t a hoax.

Chuck Norris’ kickback and his World Net Daily polemics are very real (although Arthur suspects the later may have a ghostwriter). The hateful and misleading “Why Do Atheists Hate America?” campaign is real, as is the campaign to free Kent Hovind from jail, as is the Evolutionists-Want-To-Murder-You line of deceit from Answers in Genesis.

If I got serious about anything in my post (which was really against the intent of the piece), no matter how briefly, it was about the content of these pieces of rubbish external to “Objective Ministries”.
Particularly the World Net Daily rubbish.

I got something wrong for sure, but I don’t think the mistake is too harmful or misleading, and with this correction in place I’m happy for it to stay as is. I’m a little red faced, but statistically I think it had to happen at some point and it’s not a mistake that I think I’ve ever made before (nor should I be repeating it any time soon!)

~ Bruce

I’m still in semi-hiatus mode at the moment. I move a heap of my furniture next Monday and my ADSL should be connected later in the same week (although it may be delayed to the following week). Still have a bunch a paperwork to go though (AEC, automatic rent payment etc). I’d rather be blogging.

In the interim, I’ll give you some rolled gold from dominionist theology of a few years past.

Objective Ministries! The people who brought you sociological thought along the lines of…

“The Internet was created by the United States of America - a Christian nation - and should not be used to spread anti-Christian, secular, or non-Christian propaganda and hatespeech. This is our Internet, and we should exercise our position as its owners and as the guardians of civilization to stop its misuse.”

(Jim Carlson, 2000)

That’s right. If you call a nation with secular origins a Christian Nation^tm, then anything invented in that secular Christian Nation is property of Christians. That’s right! If it came from America and you aren’t a Christian, the Ned Flanders of the world can just come along and take it.

Take that democracy!

Apparently we are subject to greater peril than we realise.

“Take for example Apple Computers, makers of the popular Macintosh line of computers. The real operating system hiding under the newest version of the Macintosh operating system (MacOS X) is called… Darwin! That’s right, new Macs are based on Darwinism! While they currently don’t advertise this fact to consumers, it is well known among the computer elite, who are mostly Atheists and Pagans. Furthermore, the Darwin OS is released under an “Open Source” license, which is just another name for Communism. They try to hide all of this under a facade of shiny, “lickable” buttons, but the truth has finally come out: Apple Computers promote Godless Darwinism and Communism.”

(“Dr.” Richard Paley, 2001)

I guess that the Apache web server is indicative of native American pagan belief and therefore is also a threat to civilization. One problem. The development of the Internet, particularly the World Wide Web, has been dependent heavily of the open source (and therefore apparently communist) Apache web server, said webserver powering the majority of websites ever in existence.

Objective Ministries, meet cognitive dissonance!

So how are we going to be saved from all of this pervasive “evolutionism”?

“The goal of Project Pterosaur is to mount an expedition to locate and bring back to the United States living specimens of pterosaurs or their fertile eggs, which will be displayed in a Pterosaur Rookery that will be the center piece of the planned Fellowship Creation Science Museum and Research Institute (FCSMRI). Furthermore, the rookery facility will establish a breeding colony of pterosaurs in order to produce specimens that could then be put on display by other regional institutions or church groups.

By doing all this, we hope to accomplish three goals:

1. Support Creation Theory by showing the incorrectness of the philosophy of Evolutionism.

2. Educate the population about Creation Science.

3. Create excitement about Creation and the Bible in the public.”

(“Dr.” Richard Paley, 2005)

Well, finding a pterosaur would create a degree of difficulty for “evolutionists”, although if Paley wanted to have a real go at it I’d stick to the fossil record. Evolution does not say that any one species must be extinct hence the discovery of a supposedly extinct species wouldn’t falsify it. On the other hand, the discovery of a rabbit fossil in Devonian rock would falsify evolution.

At the very least, though his attempt to falsify evolution (or “evolutionism”) he is admitting that the theory is falsifiable and therfore a scientific theory, rather than just a philosophy. This is a massive self-contradiction and to anyone who is science literate, a clear mark of dishonesty.

This guy is Objective Ministries’ science liason with the public, so one can expect that he is trying to dupe the usual crowd who wouldn’t know the criteria for a scientific theory from naval maneuvers in the South Atlantic.

Not surprising considering that from their front page they are lobbying for the release of Kent Hovind, support the dishonest “Why do Atheists Hate America?” campaign run by Council Nedd II, and subscribe to lies peddled by Chuck Norris.

“Once upon a time, years ago, it seemed that the only major fire for atheism burned from the anti-Christian work of Madelyn Murray O’Hair and the American Atheist organization, whose claim to fame was the banning of prayer and Bible reading in public schools in 1963.“

(Chuck Norris, 2008 - Emphasis added)

Neither the reading of Bibles, nor prayer were ever banned in school. You can read part II and part III of Norris’ ludicrous and hysterical conspiracy theory about Atheists taking over here.

What a sordid lot.

~ Bruce

Update: A correction to this post has been made here.

Apparently coding open source will lead to criminality if journalists (ahem) like Matt Richtel of the New York Times are to believed. The relevant fallacy is post hoc ergo propter hoc. Nice work, Richtel…

Read more here.

Oh well, at least it isn’t as bad (but is just as incorrect) as blaming NAZI Germany on naturalism.

~ Bruce

Things to do when proper blogging recommences, in order, with no long entries until they are done;

• Finish the “Learning and Believing” and “Gnosis; Theism and Atheism” sections of my “Atheism and Theory of Justification” series of blogs…
• Finish my post on the Political Correctness conspiracy theory (peddled by the likes of Lind)…
• Finish my short critique of Subversive Muse’s Short Critique of Science… Oh bum… It’s gone. Damn.
• Address Hap’s point/challenge about an a priori principle of harm…

These are like new year’s resolutions; made to be broken but good if they are achieved. You officially have nagging rights as well. Just don’t make me mow the lawn.

~ Bruce

…of your own castle.

I’ve finally found a new home for myself. I won’t say much more than I like the location which is not too far from all I need, both practically and for a good part culturally. When I was a teenager at high school, we used to associate the area with wine-drinking lefties, so you know I’m some kind of out-of-touch elite who has sold out.

I won’t be revealing too much in the way of details, because Iain Hall has himself already shown a renewed and unhealthy interest in my personal details.

“It is always amusing that Everett denounces anyone seeking out details of his “private life” when he so freely discusses his own life in his blog as he does above…”

A bit like someone defending rape on the grounds that a woman’s clothing was revealing and thus invited an attack. For clarity, I’m not accusing Iain of being a rapist. I know how he likes to pretend he’s the victim of false allegations so I won’t let that caveat go unpublished!

In any case, I never revealed any information that I thought would make me vulnerable, nor is volunteering my own information equivocal to some net-stalker data-mining it.

There are other cyberstalkers on the intertubes out there as well, so seriously, you really do have to be careful what to reveal when you talk about your life online and I’ll be taking measures to help protect myself.

I’ll be getting a silent phone number and I’ll become a private voter, so I won’t appear on the published electoral role either. Have you got that on your little database Iain (for all the good it will do you)? * Rolls eyes *

No, I will be coming back to the blogosphere, publishing from my nice new home. No matter how often my being candid about aspects of my life may give the creeps a stalk-on the way a harmless glance or a dress in the breeze may excite a perv, I won’t be dissuaded.

My blogging hiatus will end. Soon.

~ Bruce

… at least at some point in the future I will be. Finding more a permanent residence has proved difficult.

Between Uni, caring work and home-hunting, I really don’t have time to blog. The really annoying part is that there have been a couple of discussions I’ve dived into, or been invited into, that I haven’t been able to dedicate myself to. A few good questions have been asked of me but sadly I just don’t have the time to answer them all.

Also, and more to the point, while I’ve been away, flame wars have popped up and to be honest it’s been a bit of a disincentive to participation.

Iain Hall has been at it again and he’s probably outdone himself. Not that I know all the details of course. The blogger known as Ant Rogenous has been outed by Iain, gaining the attention of Andrew Landeryou who has in turn published AR’s home address for all of the internet squadristi to see.

I’m not entirely sure that AR has done anything sufficiently provocative to sufficiently explain this treatment, although I don’t think that he deserved it. If he did anything sufficiently wrong and his attackers obtained his personal details, why not just take things up through official channels?

Then there’s the creepyness that The Happy Revolutionary has been subjected to. The most I’ve seen Hap as guilty of is a perhaps over-indulgence in articulated barbs (”Reader’s Digest Nietzsche for retards” comes fondly to mind) and a particular insult leveled at Dr John Ray, where he stated that Dr Ray looked like a pedophile. Hap then went on to question who would leave children in the hands of guys like Ray or Iain Hall (who had reproduced some of Ray’s race-based, pseudo-science).

I won’t say that I appreciate this particular set of barbs. I did and still do think that they detracted from what was otherwise a really good post.

This was back in October of last year and Iain is still fixated on Hap, after initially sexing up his victim status by wrongly claiming that Hap called him a pedophile and then that Hap implied that he was a pedophile, neither of which was actually true. It’s probably why Iain can’t substantiate his accusation of slander (read the comments).

Sadly, Iain has appeared to have made good on his threats to Hap, namely;

“I have absolutely no problem with anyone writing under a pen name but when someone, like Hap, uses anonymity to slander people, who write in their own names, then these anonymous scumbags become an open target to be named and shamed.
Personally I offer a bottle of Scotch to anyone who can name the scrote.”

(Iain Hall, 2007)

In the past month or two, Iain has gone as far as contacting the place of employment of another blogger known as Alex. I’ve seen a couple of barbs directed Iain’s way from Alex, although I can’t recall where. Iain being Iain though, I can understand why he’s motivated towards malice against Alex.

Alex did stuff up of course; he published a couple of posts that replicated the work of another, without permission and without citation. Not exactly a small boo-boo in my books. Iain contacted the original author to tell them of the mistake Alex made, which to be honest is fair enough. Why Alex’s place of work is any of Iain’s business however is a mystery.

This is documented on Bourbon Boy’s blog, which due to a long-standing decision of mine, I won’t be linking to. In part because the said blog has listed Iain Hall’s home address.

I’m not so sure that BB’s blog is going to help this flame war die off either. Bourbon Boy has claimed that he has a magistrate’s report that names and comments upon Iain and is threatening to release it if Alex loses his job.

Seems a bit like a bluff to me. Why not just release it anyway if it is somehow relevant to all of this, and if it isn’t, why bother making the threat?

Iain’s also copped some flack from the Random Brainwave side of town, being the topic of a series of songs running under the title of “Pernicious Minds“.

In all fairness, I have to say that Iain deserves these parodies. Through his now prominent (and prolifically self-promoted) acts of online malevolence and the relevance of the points of satire, I think that all of the criteria for justified ridicule have been met.

Indeed, the songs are quite funny and they are actually pretty well produced all things considered.

Still, I wonder just how pragmatic and how wise releasing this kind of stuff is. What happens if Iain crosses the line with one of the Random Brainwave guys, or someone else, where the Pernicious Minds songs can be cited as provocation. Sure, it probably won’t get Iain off the hook (depending on how he crosses the line), but would the existence of this kind of material make proceedings any easier? I think not.

Not that I’m telling the Random Brainwave guys that they shouldn’t do this, I’m not. I’m just hoping that they and anyone co-operating is considering the potential consequences should they in future have to go toe-to-toe with Iain in court down the track. I’m hoping they are prepared for a bit more of a fight if it’s needed.

That’s why I don’t pen some lyrics myself. Dog knows I can think of a few.

Of course, no amount of bartering with Iain is going to stop his little antics. Back last year he stated…

“Exactly Mikey :0)
If you lot ignore me I will return the favor.”

(Iain Hall, 2007)

A promise he didn’t keep. Iain was ignored by most of the usual crowd for a period of about three months. I know, because I was a part of discussions (with whom I won’t say) keeping people from having a go at him for some of his lesser attempts at attention seeking during the period.

What did this blind-eye-to-Hall achieve? Nothing.

Iain was like an AA member who had broken down in a brewery with a splurge of three unprovoked anti-Jeremy, faux-fisking attack pieces within a month (here, here and here) some time back now after months of being left alone.

Clearly, Iain either can’t or doesn’t intend to keep his word on this count. Given his prior self-contradiction, I’ll assume it’s the latter.

You would think then with this kind of addictive behaviour, Iain would have a bit of sympathy for those fighting with these kinds of personal demons. Say a heroin addict who chose to be candid… Not so.

“Your compassion for the addicted would be admirable if you actually had any understanding at all about addiction(which you don’t) The thing is most addicts are very skilled at bullshit to those around them and more importantly to themselves. Terry’s blog tries very hard to sell the line that you can manage an addiction by periods of abstinence/replacement followed by “rewards” of Heroin. Self delusion at best, at worst it give s the impression that such strategies are a successful way to manage a serious habit. In another place where he wrote a comment suggesting that he wished his parents had given him “smack” I made the retort that a “hot shot” would cure what ails him, now he got rather upset about this But you think that someone who wears his weakness as a badge of honour would be a little more sanguine about being mocked using the terminology of his poison of choice…”

(Iain Hall, 2008 )

Iain’s demonstrated fixation on Terry Wright on the thread in question is shameful.

Iain’s obsession seems stronger and sicker than ever and he clearly has no intention of doing the right thing.

I think people should be prepared for things to get worse and perhaps for something to be done about it. Perhaps the release of the next Pernicious Minds can be release after Iain (and presumably his wife if the phone line Iain uses in at all in her name) has been dealt with?

And to think I intend to return to a blogosphere plagued by this kind of acrimony. Sheesh.

~ Bruce

P.S. I’m thinking of removing blogs from my blogroll that link to Iain Hall in a manner not in some way warning the reader of the nature of his publications.

Update: The outing of Ant Rogenous appears to have been another sting designed to demonstrate the motives and means of Iain Hall, but one that managed to snare Andrew Landeryou as well.

While thankfully Ant Rogenous wasn’t outed, it does demonstrate a little bit about cyber-safety. There are people online with whom it is simply not safe to have a dialogue with.

It is best to avoid these people and it is dishonest and downright careless for other bloggers to pass them of as somehow being just harmless peers amongst the blogosphere albeit with merely a difference of opinion. They are no such thing.

Update 2: It appears that the information mined by Iain found it’s way to Landeryou by way of a Leon Bertrand, who would otherwise seem to be a more respectable blogger, perhaps exercising an uncharacteristic lapse in judgement and hence deserving another chance.

The Pope has attacked the US arm of the Catholic Church for child sex abuses, and the handling thereof.

“During his flight to the US on Tuesday the Pope spoke of his own deep shame about the crisis, which has cost the US Church $2bn (£1bn) in compensation settlements.

He vowed to work against a recurrence, saying “we will absolutely exclude paedophiles from the sacred ministry

…

“Responding to this situation has not been easy and, as the president of your episcopal conference has indicated, it was sometimes very badly handled,” he said.”.

(BBC News, 2008 )

How many years since the scandal began? It’s good in that it’s getting attention, but the (late) timing is also an example of bad handling. It was badly handled in the US back in the day, and it is being badly handled by the current Pope today. He has a lot of catching up to due, which makes his other comments all the more disturbing.

“He laid part of the blame for the crisis, of which he feels “deeply ashamed”, on a breakdown in US values.”

(BBC News, 2008 )

In as far as the Iraq war and the way Americans can treat their fellow Americans and immigrants from-south-of-the-border, while my epistemology is entirely different than the Pope’s, I am probably in agreement. However, and as a part of my epistemology, I can not claim to know of a causal relationship between the general erosion of these (and many other) values in the US, and kiddy fiddling amongst the clergy.

The Pope on the other hand can defer to a (theologically) reason-resistant, absolutist metaphysic. A reasoned reductio or two on the argument show the absurdity however.

The Catholic Church is saddened by the history of the Spanish Inquisition and pledged to out inquisitors from it’s rank, however they attributed the cause of at least a portion of the atrocities to a lack of attendance at mass and a failure to recognise Jesus as the son of God (which somehow magically robbed the inquisitors of their free-will).

Feel free to add more to the list, but you can get the gist. Sins of the Church can be ascribed at least in part to external agency in the faux-reasoning of the pontiff (notably his predecessor when making Mea Culpa did not engage in such supernatural apologia - reason for him to be sorely missed).

How should a secular democracy deal with this? Do we for example, assume that Catholic schools are autonomous from the reasoning of their Popes? What if they aren’t? If Catholic schools take on board the Pope’s metaphysical accountability mechanism (not translatable into secular terms), can any state
view them as fully accountable for the welfare of their students?

If the default assumptions of the Pope become the default of Catholic schools, should the state require them to dissent in order to maintain accountability? Failing this, should state funding of the non-dissenting Catholic schools cease?

Tolerance can not be absolute in a liberal democracy. For example, murder robs the victim of liberty and the liberal democracy hence does not tolerate murder.

A liberal democracy should not and can not tolerate diversions of accountability where harm (i.e. kiddy fiddling) is concerned. As a part of it’s secular nature, a liberal democracy can not accept an untranslatable supernatural metaphysic as a justification, so the Pope’s mechanism is illegitimate in as far as the state is concerned.

A liberal, secular democracy can not brook preference between the religions either. If the state does it for Catholics, we have to do it for Muslims and everyone else.

Not that all (or most) Muslims want it, but if a state accepts accept theological, metaphysical apologia for child abuse, where would poor Nojoud Muhammed Nasser be today? The poor girl had no understanding of what marriage involved, at least in as far as a prerequisite of consent is concerned, just as the victims of kiddy-fiddling Catholic priests weren’t able to fully understand their position so as to consent.

The same is true of girls married to older men in Mormon communities in the US. The state has grounds to regulate/legislate in the place of minors by prohibiting these acts and (uniformly) enforcing responsibility upon institutions and individuals involved in the upbringing of these minors.

There is a trend towards faith schools in the west, with Catholic, Protestant, Jewish and Islamic arms of the Abrahamic all gaining significant financing from the state in the UK to provide alternatives to public education. In theory at least, it’s not limited to the Abrahamic of course.

With this state support, at least within a supposedly secular/liberal-democratic west, comes the requirement that private schools accept the same accountability as their state counterparts. Accountability for the spending of tax-payer’s money, if public or private the purpose be, accountability can not be shirked (taxing the populace without demonstrable net reduction in harm being an infringement about the liberty of the citizen).

The Catholic Church, as well as others, should not be getting any clemency in this respect. Moreover, if the state starts accepting metaphysical apologia, we can expect the various churches concerned to not take their responsibilities seriously.

More harm will follow were such motivated neglect exists.

~ Bruce

P.S. I’ll be disappearing back into hiatus mode again for a while.